Gameplay wise... it is playable although still very laggy by modern standards.

The real problem is the non-existent rating system. What is personally driving me away and I'm sure many others is that it is impossible to get a good game. Every game I am either stomping absolutely terrible people or fending off a 2v1 or 3v1 (which are generally the most fun as it requires effort to win).

For example, I played a game that was titled something like "4v4 pros only" and most people were reasonably good but then there was someone on my team who hit Feudal at 30 minutes.

The current "rating system" is a joke... mixing ratings with custom scenarios, random map, deathmatch, etc.

Ya, in multiplayer games the queue distribution doesn't work right if you quickly press the train key. It has something to do with latency and command propagation. Until it is fixed in a patch you can get it training correctly by spacing each training order out by half a second or so (depending on latency).

About 1 game in 3 of my games have bad lag. its probably about 0.5-1s delay between clicking and the unit responding. Now I pay more attention to ping in the lobby though and that's helping. The game is in a good place I think and worth a punt if you like the original. I think it will grow!

The lobby does need work though. There's no lobby chat and not much info about each game.

Just buy it on Amazon for $8 and get the 1.2 patch from the side bar then FE if you want that as well. I played AOE2HD on my friend's Steam today and it sucked compared to the disk version with the patch updates.